Patent Application
20130110807
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119 from Chinese Patent Application No. 201110347170.3 filed Oct. 31, 2011, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Technical Field
The invention generally relates to intranet, and more specifically to an intranet search method and apparatus, a search engine and terminal equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Internet search techniques are relatively well known, but search of an enterprise intranet is developing very slowly. Employees of enterprises complain that finding desired information through the enterprise intranet is difficult and time-consuming.
Presently, the common technique in enterprise intranet search is migrating Internet search techniques to the enterprise intranet. However, a problem occurs from such a migration, that is, due to features such as isolated data sources of the intranet, relatively decentralized search, slow updates of information, Internet search techniques cannot be completely adapted.
Another technique in enterprise intranet search is an intranet search engine specially developed for enterprises.
A problem existing in the intranet search engine in the prior art is that, the performance cannot satisfy the needs of the employees. It is reflected in the following aspects:
Data sources of the enterprise intranet are isolated from each other. Different departments of the enterprise can have different sub-webpages containing various links, and the sub-webpages are not necessarily always linked to the home page of the enterprise. When the intranet crawler 208 searches the enterprise intranet 216 for information, it is possible that links associated with some information are not linked to the enterprise intranet 216. If the information is what the employees exactly needed, it is difficult for the employees to find it.
Since searches of the employees are relatively decentralized, it is hard to make statistics of a hot degree of the keywords. Therefore, many enterprise intranets do not sort the search results. Even if sorting is made, authority of the sorting is poor. Because the enterprise intranet is updated slowly, a lot of information is out of date, which has an impact on search effects. There are some independent data sources in the enterprise that are not linked to the intranet, so intranet search apparently can do nothing about the data sources. Furthermore, information security issues of the enterprise also hamper sharing of partial information.
According to an aspect of the invention, an intranet search method is provided. The method includes receiving an intranet inquiry, and in response to the intranet inquiry, returning as a part of search result, a link matching the intranet inquiry in an email in an email system.
According to a second aspect of the invention, an intranet search apparatus is provided. The apparatus includes a receiving unit configured to receive an intranet inquiry; and an inquiry result generating unit configured to, in response to the intranet inquiry, return as a part of search result, a link matching the intranet inquiry in an email in an email system.
According to a third aspect of the invention, computer readable storage medium tangibly embodying a computer readable program code having computer readable instructions which, when implemented, cause a computer to carry out the steps of a method. The method includes receiving an intranet inquiry, and in response to the intranet inquiry, returning, as a part of search results, a link matching the intranet inquiry in an email in an email system.
The accompanying drawings to which the present application makes reference are only used for exemplifying typical embodiments of the invention, but shall not be construed as limiting the scope of the invention.
In the followings discussion, details are provided to help thoroughly understand the present invention. However, it is apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that even though there are no such concrete details, the understanding of the present invention cannot be influenced. It should be further appreciated that any specific terms used below are only for the convenience of description, and the present invention should not be limited to only use in any specific applications represented and/or implied by such terms.
As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present invention can be embodied as a system, method or computer program product. Accordingly, aspects of the present invention can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that can all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Furthermore, aspects of the present invention can take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable medium(s) having computer readable program code embodied thereon.
Any combination of one or more computer readable medium(s) can be utilized. The computer readable medium can be a computer readable signal medium or a computer readable storage medium. A computer readable storage medium can be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readable storage medium can include the followings: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. In the context of this document, a computer readable storage medium can be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
A computer readable signal medium can include a propagated data signal with computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal can take any of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. A computer readable signal medium can be any computer readable medium that is not a computer readable storage medium and that can communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
Program code embodied on a computer readable medium can be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of the foregoing.
Computer program code for carrying out operations for aspects of the present invention can be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. The program code can execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer can be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection can be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).
Aspects of the present invention are described below with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions can be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
These computer program instructions can also be stored in a computer readable medium that can direct a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instructions which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The computer program instructions can also be loaded onto a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, other programmable apparatus or other devices to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
A core idea of the invention is that the email system in an enterprise is a data source relatively independent of the intranet. The email system of the enterprise contains a great deal of useful data source information. For example, in order to fill in a year-end sum up, employees need to find an entry to the page for filling in a year-end sum up, but no useful results can be found through the intranet search engine in the prior art (e.g., the link at the time is possibly not linked to the intranet by a relevant department responsible for maintaining it). However, in fact, in an email sent to the employee by his superior, there is a link to the page for filling in a year-end sum up, and an absolute deadline before which the year-end sum up must be submitted is clearly indicated in the email. If the intranet search engine of the enterprise can refer to the information in the email system, search effects can be greatly improved.
The intranet search engine according to an embodiment of the invention periodically searches the email system while periodically collecting updated data from the enterprise intranet, and also stores the links appearing in the emails in the email system. In addition, since the links appearing in the email system are even more important than the results searched on the enterprise intranet, a higher score can be given to the links appearing in the emails while sorting the search results such that the links are sorted in front while being presented to the search user.
The invention achieves an effect, that is, even if some important links needed by the employees are not linked to the intranet possibly due to isolated data sources of different departments, they can be obtained through searching the email system, because emails are usually broadcast cross a number of departments. Since the email system possibly further contains links to other data sources of non-intranets, data sources of the search engine are expanded.
Since the obtained email in the email system contains time information, timeliness can be taken into consideration while sorting the search results, thereby solving the problem that out-of-date information has an impact on searching efficiency. In addition, since emails contain a great deal of up-to-date information, links contained in the emails have more powerful timeliness than ordinary links searched in the intranet.
Since the links appearing in the emails are always more important in the enterprise than those links not appearing in the emails, and it is possible to judge importance of the links through an organization position of the senders of the emails, the number of receivers and etc., authority of sorting in the search result presenting page is enhanced. In addition, since emails contain a great deal of up-to-date information, contents repeatedly appearing in the emails contain hot spot information. Search results sorted according to the hot degree have higher authority. Since each user can only acquire information from those emails he/she receives, security of the search is guaranteed.
The email system 230 includes an enterprise email server 213 and an enterprise email storage 215.
The receiving unit 203 receives an intranet inquiry. In an embodiment, the intranet inquiry is an inquiry with a keyword. Of course, those skilled in the art can make other inquiries without a keyword.
The inquiry result generating unit 211 is configured to, in response to the intranet inquiry, return as a part of search results, a link matching the intranet inquiry in an email in the email system. In the embodiment of keyword inquiry, the inquiry result generating unit 211, in response to the keyword inquiry, returns as a part of search results, a link matching the keyword in an email in the email system to the search result page. The search results further include links matching the intranet inquiry, searched in the intranet.
The email crawler 207 periodically searches links appearing in new emails in the email system and stores them in the search buffer 205. However, the email crawler 207 notifies the meta information extracting unit 209 of the new emails in which links appear, and the meta information extracting unit 209 extracts according to the notification meta information on the new emails in which links appear. The meta information includes e.g., keywords in the title of the email, sender, receiver, email reception time, expiry date contained in the email, and one or more of the keywords in the text of the email. An existing mature semantic analysis technique can be adopted for carrying out the extraction.
The sorting and index computing unit 210 computes indexes for links newly stored in the search buffer (including links in the searched emails and links searched in the intranet) according to the extracted meta information. For the links in the email, indexing is made according to the keywords in the title of the email (and keywords in the text of the email if necessary). For the links searched in the intranet, indexing can be made according to keywords contained in the title, abstract and etc. There are mature techniques for indexing at present.
After the receiving unit 203 receives the intranet inquiry, it issues a request to the search buffer 205. Links matching the intranet inquiry are found in the search buffer 205 based on a match between index made by the sorting and index computing unit 210 and the intranet inquiry. The sorting and index computing unit 210, in response to the intranet inquiry, evaluates the links matching the intranet inquiry according to the extracted meta information, so as to sort the links according to results of the evaluation.
Alternatively, the evaluation on the links matching the intranet inquiry is made based on one or more of the followings: similarity between the search results and the intranet inquiry, importance of the search results, and timeliness of the search results. In case where the intranet inquiry is a keyword inquiry, similarity between the search results and the intranet inquiry is mainly embodied on similarity between the search results and the keyword.
The evaluation on the links matching the intranet inquiry can be made based on other items thinkable by those skilled in the art, so long as the items are reasonable for sorting the links as search results.
As an example of similarity between the search results and the intranet inquiry, similarity between the link whose index contains “year-end sum up report” and the keyword “year-end sum up report” is higher than the similarity between the link whose index contains “year-end report” and the keyword “year-end sum up report”. At present, e.g., on the Internet, there are mature techniques for calculating scores of the search results (i.e., evaluation results) according to similarity and sorting the search results.
Alternatively, the importance of the search results is determined based on one or more of the followings: sources of the links, i.e., whether the links come from emails or from ordinary intranet search; a number of references of the links in the email system; a number of references of the links by other pages in the intranet search; a position of the sender and a number of receivers of the emails referring to the links.
For the sources of the links, a link referred to in the email system is assigned a higher importance than it is referred to by other pages in the intranet search. For the number of references of the link in the email system, the more references of the link in the email system are, the more important it is. For the number of references of the link by other pages in the intranet search, the more references of the link by other pages in the intranet search are, the more important it is. For the link in the email, the higher the position of the email sender referring to the link is, the more important it is. For the link in the email, the more the receivers of the email referring to the link are, the more important it is.
It is provided that, a score of 10 is given if the link appears once in the email, and a score of 1 is given if the link is referred to once by other pages in the intranet search. If the link appears in the email, if the sender of the email is a department manager, a score of 5 is added, if the sender is a general manager, a score of 10 is added, and if the sender is a board chairman, a score of 20 is added. If the link appears in the email, if the number of receivers exceeds 10, a score of 1 is added, if the number exceeds 20, a score of 2 is added, if the number exceeds 30, a score of 3 is added, and so on.
A link A is referred to by two emails and is not referred to by other pages in the intranet search. One of the two emails is sent by the board chairman and has 95 receivers, and the other is sent by the department manager and has 5 receivers, so it is calculated that the importance is (10+20+9)+(10+5)=54.
A link B is referred to by an email and is referred to by other pages in the intranet search 28 times. The sender of the email is an ordinary employee and has 17 receivers. It is calculated that the importance is 10+1+28=39.
A link C is not referred to by emails and is referred to by other pages in the intranet search 25 times. It is calculated that the importance is 25.
There are other manners of calculating the importance and readily occur to those skilled in the art.
Alternatively, for the links in the emails, timeliness of a search result is determined based on a reception time of the email referring to the link, and a valid time in the email referring to the link, wherein the valid time is an important date such as an expiry date and a filing date appearing in the mail. For the link referred to by other pages in the intranet search, timeliness of the search result is set to be a fixed value.
It is provided that, for a link in the email, if the current time−the reception time of the email≦1 minute, then timeliness=40; if the expiry time appearing in the email is earlier than the current time, the score is cancelled and becomes 0; if the current time minus the reception time of the email is longer than 1 minute and is no longer than 1 hour, then timeliness equals 30, but if the expiry time appearing in the email is earlier than the current time, the score is cancelled and becomes 0; if the current time minus the reception time of the email is longer than 1 hour and is no longer than 1 day, then timeliness equals 20, but if the expiry time appearing in the email is earlier than the current time, the score is cancelled and becomes 0; if the current time minus the reception time of the email is longer than 1 day and is no longer than 1 week, then timeliness equals 10, but if the expiry time appearing in the email is earlier than the current time, the score is cancelled and becomes 0; otherwise, timeliness equals 0. For the links found in the intranet search, since the links carry less time information associated therewith, timeliness of the links is set to be 5.
For example, the reception time of the email containing a link D is 17:30:57, 2011 Sep. 28, the expiry time contained in the email is 17:30:57, 2011 Sep. 29, and the current time is 18:06:05, 2011-09-29. The calculated timeliness equals 0.
For example, a link E is a link found in the intranet search. The calculated timeliness equals 5.
If a link appears in a plurality of emails, or not only appears in emails but also is found in the intranet search, timeliness is calculated for each appearance and an average value or a weighted average value is taken.
There are other manners of calculating timeliness and readily occur to those skilled in the art.
In one embodiment, after similarity between the search results and the intranet search, importance of the search results and timeliness of the search results are calculated, an average value or a weighted average value is taken as an evaluation result of the search results. Of course, there are other manners of calculating the evaluation result from similarity, importance and timeliness.
For example, for a link F, similarity between the search result and the keyword is 28, importance of the search result is 16, timeliness of the search result is 10, a weight of similarity is 30%, a weight of importance is 50%, a weight of timeliness is 20%, then the calculated evaluation result is 28×30%+16×50%+10×20%=18.4.
For example, for a link G, similarity between the search result and keyword is 10, importance of the search result is 50, timeliness of the search result is 20, and weights of similarity, importance and timeliness remain unchanged, then the calculated evaluation result is 10×30%+50×50%+20×20%=32.
The searched links in the emails and the links matching the intranet inquiry in the intranet are presented on the search result page in an order based on the evaluation results. According to the above example, the link G is sorted in front of the link F on the search result page. On the search result page, the search results generally are sorted from high to low according to the evaluation results.
The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams can represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which includes one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block can occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession can, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks can sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 201110347170.3 | Oct 2011 | CN | national |
